Bobby Jindal issues orders to sever Common Core ties

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal issued executive orders Wednesday to withdraw the state from the Common Core standards and federally subsidized standardized tests, defying his state legislature, his superintendent of education and the business community — but endearing himself to tea party activists across the country who could be influential in early primary states if he chooses to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

“We want out of Common Core,” Jindal said at a press conference. “We’re very alarmed about choice and local control of curriculum being taken away from our parents and educators. It is never too late to make the right decision.”

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Within an hour of Jindal’s announcement, state Superintendent John White was telling reporters that the governor had no authority to back out of the Common Core or scrap the exam the state was planning to use, which was developed by a federally subsidized consortium known as PARCC.

“The state will continue to implement the Common Core and continue to implement the PARCC tests — the governor’s comments notwithstanding,” White said.

A few hours after that, the state commissioner of administration held her own news conference to say that White had exceeded his authority. Not only that: She was suspending the contract that the state education department had planned to use to purchase and administer PARCC test questions. The commissioner, Kristy Nichols — a former deputy chief of staff to Jindal — said the way White had structured the testing deal may have violated the state’s contracting laws.

The roller coaster left Common Core foes not sure whether to celebrate or start drawing up new battle plans to help the governor get his way.

“We will remain watchful as to how all of this will continue to unfold,” said Debbie Sachs, an anti-Common Core activist in the state.

Jindal was once a marquee supporter of the Common Core standards, which lay out the math and language arts concepts children should learn in every grade from kindergarten through high school. The governor helped bring the standards to Louisiana in 2010. As recently as this spring, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation included a quote from Jindal — praising the Common Core as a way to “raise expectations for every child” — in a promotional video for the standards.

A likely presidential candidate in 2016, Jindal has seized on the standards as an example of federal meddling in state affairs. The Obama administration didn’t write the standards, but it pushed states hard to adopt them and spent $360 million subsidizing the development of new assessments.

Just this week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan publicly took Jindal to task for flip-flopping on the standards, saying the governor’s new stance had everything to do with politics and nothing to do with education.

Jindal’s response: “We will not be bullied by the federal government.”

Other Republican governors have made similar assessments of the Common Core. In late March, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed legislation that made the state the first to repeal the standards, in favor of a home-grown version that ended up mirroring the Common Core in many respects.

Oklahoma was next: Just five months after she gave a feisty speech supporting the standards, calling them crucial to American growth, Gov. Mary Fallin signed a bill repealing them.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley also signed a bill last month revoking the standards, though new ones won’t be in place until 2015. Like her counterparts, Haley said she saw the Common Core as a tool of federal control. South Carolinians, she said, needed to set their own standards for educating their children, not just to march them through a curriculum in lock-step with students in California.

Two other states also have passed measures to undo the Common Core. In North Carolina, legislators are trying to reconcile bills passed by the House and Senate. In Missouri, Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon has until July 14 to decide whether to sign a bill abolishing the standards that was passed by the Republican-dominated legislature.

The backlash has been fueled, in part, by tea party activist groups such as FreedomWorks, which has the organizational muscle to generate thousands of protest letters and petition signatures; by conservative think tanks such as the American Principles Project; and by right-wing radio hosts such as Glenn Beck, who is holding an interactive program in movie theaters nationwide next month to organize what he promises will be an all-out war to overturn the Common Core. He will be joined by conservative columnist Michelle Malkin and evangelical historian David Barton.

Opponents across the political spectrum have mostly focused on the federal government’s role in promoting the standards, but they have also raised a laundry list of other objections: Some call the standards too easy; others say they’re too tough; some fear they will usher in too much standardized testing; others worry that they have not been adequately tested or rigorously reviewed by teachers who deal with children of all backgrounds, including special-needs students and those still learning English.